The Rest of Her Life
by Serrafina
Summary: Kara doesn't believe in love at first sight. K/Z, hint of K/L.


Title: The Rest of Her Life

Disclaimer: Not mine; not making any profit.

Characters/Pairings: Kara/Zak, implied Kara/Lee

Spoilers: pre-mini, with spoilers for Daybreak Part 2

AN: Thanks to tracyj23 for the beta.

Summary: Kara doesn't believe in love at first sight.

* * *

When Kara meets Zak Adama, it isn't a big deal—no world-disappearing, eyes-connecting-across-the-room, grand-symphony-of-love moment. Kara doesn't believe in romance anyway.

She does believe in flying, in instant gratification, in finely sculpted bodies, and the sins of the flesh (Aphrodite never gave a damn about _rules_ or _patience_ or _socially acceptable_). But Zak Adama is her student so for the moment she doesn't let herself think about it, even if her eyes do stray appreciatively during the first lecture. Judging by his smile, he notices, but that doesn't stop her.

He asks her for an extra lesson in the sims one day, and she obliges because, _hell_, he needs it, and she doesn't have anything better to do. She loves flying, but she doesn't love watching flight being butchered, and she feels so sorry for him when he tumbles out of the sim that she offers to tutor him until he feels comfortable in the cockpit. When he asks if he can buy her a drink, she accepts (she's thirsty).

At first she feels a little odd, sharing drinks with a cadet, but soon enough she finds that Zak is funny and sweet, and she likes the way he looks at her.

It becomes a regular sort-of-not-really date, drinks after their weekly private lesson. Three weeks later, she takes him back to her apartment because it seems like the thing to do. He doesn't leave when they finish and she's too tired to kick him out, but she's still surprised when she wakes up to find him, sleeping pressed up against her back.

She gets out of bed, showers and dresses in the bathroom. When she comes back to the bedroom, he's still there. Kara stops in the doorway and just stands there, waiting for him to get the hint. He doesn't.

"Hey!" she says.

He looks up from where he's been kneeling on the floor, rooting around for his clothing. He straightens up in just his boxers. He's got his pants clutched in one hand, but apparently feels no need to put them on. Instead, he just grins at her.

"Good morning," he says.

She frowns because it doesn't seem very good so far. "Yeah, whatever," she says. "The door's that way." She points, just in case he's stupid or too hungover to remember.

His grin doesn't falter. "What, no kiss goodbye?"

"Sorry Cadet," she says. "Doesn't work that way."

"Are you sure about that, LT?" He doesn't exactly step forward, but he seems to lean in towards her, making his presence felt. "Because it seemed to work that way last night."

She stands firm. "Damn sure."

It takes some convincing, but she manages to shepherd Cadet Adama out of her bedroom, up the stairs and out of her apartment.

"Sim bay, 1700!" he calls out as she slams the door.

At that moment, Kara begins to realize just how monumentally stupid it was to take a cadet back to her home. She can stop giving him those extra lessons but somehow that seems like defeat. Besides, if the whole thing really means nothing to her, well then a few extra hours in the sims won't mean a thing either.

So they keep doing the extra lessons. Zak crashes again, but this time she says no when he offers to buy her a drink. Sitting by herself in her apartment later that night, she tries not to think about what she'd rather be doing.

She doesn't know what this is, but Zak turns out to be just as stubborn as she is. He refuses to just go away, and at some point between her third and fourth attempts to convince him that it was just a one-time thing, she realizes that she doesn't actually want him to leave. She doesn't tell him that, of course, but maybe he knows anyway.

Zak starts spending the night regularly and after a week or so of this he brings over a change of clothes. It's not long after that she finds herself buying the cream and sugar he likes in his morning coffee, even though she takes it black. Still, she assures herself that these steps are just convenient and she can end this anytime she likes.

Eventually, Zak starts showing up unannounced. One day he comes while she's watching the pyramid quarterfinals. The game is tied with only a few minutes left in the first half, when she hears the knock on her door. She glances towards the door, then back to her small television set.

He knocks again. "Kara, are you there?" he calls. "I saw your truck in the lot. Kara—"

"Just frakking wait!" she shouts back, refusing to tear her eyes from the game.

She makes him wait outside until the half-time whistle blows. He's irritated when she finally opens the door, only to go straight back to the sofa in front of the television.

"A pyramid game?" he says, shocked. He stands to the side of the couch, looking at her as she stares at the screen. "It's freezing out there and you make me wait for a frakking pyramid game?"

"Yeah, you got a problem with that?" she snaps, whipping her head around to shoot him a glare. "End of the first half in the damn quarterfinals, with Overbeck getting a foul break and..." She shakes her head and turns back to the TV, waiting for play to resume.

Zak is silent for a moment, and she can feel him studying her with his eyes. After a few seconds, he steps around the sofa to sit by her side. She steadfastly avoids meeting his eyes, but can't help glancing down to the infinitesimal space between his leg and hers.

"Who's playing?" he says.

"Buccaneers and Angels."

"Do you—"

"Game's starting again," she snaps, cutting him off.

Caprica scrapes by with a win over the Aerilon Angels. Kara decides to give Zak the spare key to her apartment, so that she doesn't always have to tear herself away from whatever she's doing to let him in. In return, Zak gives her two tickets to the semifinal match-up against the Scorpia Sabers, plus train tickets to and from Caprica City.

The C-Bucs lose that game, but Kara finds that she doesn't care. On the train back to Delphi, she doesn't pull away when Zak reaches for her hand, and when she's tired she rests her head on his shoulder.

When he tells her he loves her, three months after they met, she's surprised, and she doesn't have anything to say, but she thinks maybe this is how it feels. Maybe this is that thing called love that everyone's always making such a fuss about.

* * *

When Zak tells her that he wants her to meet his brother, Kara's not happy about the idea. In his stories Lee Adama is always the stiff, goody-goody of an older brother. But she can't say "no" to Zak, not when he's just about all she has in the universe. Not when he's going to finish Basic Flight in six weeks and they haven't yet talked about what happens after. She hates being clingy, and loathes the idea that she might have agreed to this dinner just for the illusion of permanence it lent her and Zak. Of course Kara has hated many truths in her life and will likely hate many more.

When Zak's brother shows up at her door, she greets him as though she does this sort of thing every day. They eat and have a few drinks and she starts to think of him as _Lee_ instead of _Zak's brother_. At first, she thinks it's easier that way—a man is a known quantity, a brother not so much.

A few hours and many shots later, she knows that was a mistake. When she sobers up, she can't think what possessed her to say those things. But that night, looking into Lee Adama's eyes, maybe she did feel a little bit fearless. She can't explain it—hell, she can't even understand it—but for a minute there nothing else mattered. There was just Lee Adama, so close she could reach out and touch him.

But Kara Thrace has never believed in romance, and of course the world didn't just disappear when she looked into his eyes. The whole thing was ridiculous, she tells herself as she scrubs at the wine stain on the carpet. She is with Zak now, and Zak is what matters. She repeats this over and over in her head until it sticks, but she can't quite forget his hand, so warm against her own.

It doesn't help that Zak drags the both of them into a pickup pyramid game the next day before her classes start and before his brother has to leave. Kara's usually a very physical player, but she gets through the game without incident and tries not to think about why she feels the sting of disappointment.

Zak's brother goes back to his battlestar, and everything is just _fine_. He promises to come back for Zak's graduation, and Kara decides it will be nice to celebrate with Zak and his brother.

She cannot believe her ears when Zak asks her to marry him, just two weeks after the dinner. She knows that the gods have given her an incredible gift in this man, and she doesn't dare turn him away. She almost rethinks her answer when, like some schoolboy, he slips his own silver ring onto her thumb. But he looks practically giddy so she just laughs and lets him kiss her breathless.

Later after they've exhausted themselves, he drifts to sleep on his side, just a few perilous inches from her. One hand is thrown across her waist and the other is draped over the pillow so that his fingers brush against her hair. She plays with the ring, sliding it up and down her thumb. She's transfixed by the way it gleams in the dim starlight filtering in through the window.

This is it, she realizes as she looks at him. The rest of her life. She smiles and closes her eyes, ready for whatever dreams may come.

* * *

Kara stands in the doorway. She stares at the room, at the bed, through the door left standing half-open after she'd gotten up in the morning. She had gotten up and gone into the kitchen to find Zak hastily swallowing his breakfast.

_He looked up when she came in and smiled._

"_Coffee's over there," he said, nodding towards the counter. She snorted and reached for a mug. Zak stepped around the island and came up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and dropping his chin to her shoulder._

"_I'd stay for breakfast, but I've gotta run. First flight."_

_She could feel his breath against her neck and she giggled at the sensation. Carefully, she set the mug down and turned around in his embrace._

Kara resolutely tamps down the memory. It was just over fifteen hours ago, but that might as well be ancient history now. She reaches forward, gripping the cold metal of the doorknob in her hand. Then she pulls the door shut and turns around. Her gaze fixes on a stain on the floor of the main room.

This is it, she knows. The rest of her life.

_fin_


End file.
